


I Will Break Down the Gates of Heaven

by sparklingstone



Series: Run to You (fem!Steve 'verse) [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (but nothing major), Angst, Bisexual Steve Rogers, CA-TWS spoilers, F/F, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Flashbacks, Pining, Suicidal Thoughts, because bisexual!Steve is so important especially if I'm making Steve Stevie, she'll get there eventually, stevie needs to learn how to live again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 13:26:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1746296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklingstone/pseuds/sparklingstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky kissed her once when he was drunk, on a hot August night in 1940 in the doorway of their apartment. He smelled like cigar smoke from the club he’d dragged her to, which made her weak lungs protest, and tasted like booze, but it was still pretty nice. Didn’t mean that she didn’t pull away, told him she wasn’t one of his dames that he could just screw around. He patted her on the cheek and gave a drunk little half-smile that still managed to look dashing. She wondered how he did it. </p><p>“Course you’re not one of the dames. You’re Stevie.” Then Bucky vomited on his own shoes, and that had been the end of that.<br/>----<br/>A glimpse at the life of Stevie Rogers, or Captain America, and how everything eventually always boiled down to Bucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Break Down the Gates of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came out of nowhere, I swear. It started because I was interested in how the Steve/Bucky dynamic would be changed if Steve was a girl, and then I was reading some other fem!Steve fics and got to wondering about what it must be like to be a bisexual female in the 40's, because it's not really talked about in fic, and then this all happened. I tried to make Stevie still the same character we know and love, just a little different and living with slightly different circumstances. I hope it's authentic. 
> 
> Title comes from Pentatonix's song "Run to You." It's beautiful.

It’s 2012, and waking up in a new world is hard. Stevie’s first thought when she hears that game on the radio is of Bucky, since it was one he took her to, and when Fury approaches her in a Times Square lit up like something out of Howard Stark’s craziest dreams, she’s still thinking about Bucky.

 

“You gonna be okay?” he asks her. 

 

“Yeah…I just…I had a date.”

\----

Stevie grew up with Bucky, and they lived together, but they were never actually going steady. People assumed, and sometimes they let them assume (he called her baby doll often enough in public), but Bucky was always out with different girls, and Stevie…well, it took her a while to realize that when she stared at a pretty dame it was not jealousy or an artist’s appreciation of beauty but the same way she stared at a handsome fella. And even though she realized this, she also knew that none of the guys (or girls, if any felt the same) would want her like that, because she was scrawny and frail and had the body of a 12-year-old boy. Not a woman, and not even that pretty.

 

Bucky kissed her once when he was drunk, on a hot August night in 1940 in the doorway of their apartment. He smelled like cigar smoke from the club he’d dragged her to, which made her weak lungs protest, and tasted like booze, but it was still pretty nice. Didn’t mean that she didn’t pull away, told him she wasn’t one of his dames that he could just screw around. He patted her on the cheek and gave a drunk little half-smile that still managed to look dashing. She wondered how he did it.

 

“Course you’re not one of the dames. You’re Stevie.” Then Bucky vomited on his own shoes, and that had been the end of that.

 

He never tried anything out on her again. Stevie didn’t know if he remembered or just didn’t want to make anything out of it. She thought about it once and a while. Other kisses (pretty few and far between) didn’t really match up. Bucky was a good kisser, even when drunk, which made sense. Bucky was good at everything.

 

Then he left. He tells her he enlisted, but Stevie knew he was drafted. Even if she hadn’t seen the form, she knew that Bucky wouldn’t leave her. He always said that she needs taking care of, which irked her, but she knew he’s right. If she were left alone too long, she’d probably die of some sickness or other. So when he left, she knew it wasn’t of his own volition. That didn’t make it much better. They’d been pretty much inseparable since they first met as little kids with missing teeth and the empty apartment ached like a phantom limb. So she donned a pair of Bucky’s old pants and tried to enlist. It didn’t work but she kept trying. Until Erskine saw something in her, and everything about her life changed pretty rapidly after that. 

\----

The fight with the Chitauri is all a blur of action and reaction. Stevie is just going through the motions. War, she can do. War is easy. And if she’s a little too reckless, not covering her back properly, then who here is going to care? It’s 2012 and she should be dead already. But she doesn’t die.

 

She’s a little too harsh on Stark (though he probably deserved it), but she finds herself genuinely liking the other members of the crazy team Fury brought together. She doesn’t have it in her to properly mourn the death of Coulson, who she barely knew but who clearly looked up to her a lot. And as soon as the battle is over, all she knows is she can’t stay in New York any more, which is far too close to Brooklyn.

 

So she goes to D.C. and stays there pretty quietly, until it all goes to hell. She makes good friends in Sam Wilson and Natasha Romanov (who she’s maybe a bit attracted to sometimes, but also often terrified of) and watches as SHIELD crumbles and Hydra emerges out of its wreckage. Cut off one head…

 

And then... Bucky. On the bridge. His eyes devoid of all that make him Bucky, cold and empty. A metal arm with a red star on the shoulder. A blur of motion that left her gasping and barely parrying his blows.

 

It’s 2014 and she stops fighting on the Helicarrier. She doesn’t want to live in a world where Bucky doesn’t look at her like she’s Stevie.

\----

Stevie first realized she was in love with Bucky in 1943, after hearing Peggy tell her about the remains of the 107th.  That was the same time she realized that she’d probably been in love with him for years, and had never noticed it because that was just like her with Bucky. And now she might lose him, and Colonel Philips won’t be stopping her. So she pulled on a coat over her very tight costume (“Captain America: The Star Spangled Girl With A Plan!” which didn’t even rhyme. They had planned on having a man, but they got her instead and had to make do.) and stole a USO girl’s helmet and had Howard and Peggy fly her over the Hydra base.

 

He told her, “I thought you were smaller,” in a disoriented voice as she pulled him off the table, but after that brief glance over her new, taller, stronger body, he looked at her the exact same as always. Pride, protectiveness, loyalty, and something tender she liked to think he reserved just for Stevie.

 

“Well, yeah, Stevie-girl,” Bucky said when she asked, his voice drawling over the vowels in the way he did sometimes. “You’re still the same stupid kid that kept getting herself into scrapes she couldn’t handle ‘cause she was tryin’ to protect a little kid or a puppy or something like that. Now you just have the body to match that big heart. Though the scrapes are a bit bigger now, doesn’t mean I still won’t have your back.” He shrugged and kicked his leg in the dirt. She’d almost say that he had been embarrassed, except for the fact that he never got embarrassed.

 

Stevie couldn’t speak. Finally, she forced out “Guess you didn’t take all the stupid with you after all, huh?”

 

Bucky smiled at her then and it was kind of like the sun, and it was amazing that she had never realized that before. _He’ll never want you that way, Stevie. Forget about it._ And when she smiled back at him, they both pretended that Bucky didn’t notice that the smile didn’t reach her eyes. They hugged anyway, and it didn’t feel like pretending then.

 ----

Moving into Stark Tower, rechristened Avengers Tower (like that was somehow less ridiculous of a name) is tough at first. Stevie has become so used to being alone, in her DC apartment. But it was decided that without SHIELD their best bet is to stick together.

 

Natasha, observant Natasha, notices her ever-present doldrums and keeps trying to set her up with people. Guys first. Getting nowhere, she hesitantly brings up the idea of girls. Stevie lashes out at first, but concedes when Natasha tells her she couldn’t care less. “Besides, I saw how you kept looking at that picture on your wall. Peggy?”

 

She considers not answering, but it’s 2014 and people are more accepting. Stevie sighs. “Yeah, Peggy.”

 ----

 Peggy Carter? Yeah, she loved her. A lot. But she loved Bucky more. It was complicated.

 

Besides, they both knew that nothing could ever happen seriously, even if that mouth in that red lipstick made her knees a little weak, and even if Peggy told Stevie that she was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen, even before the serum (and her eyes had chased Stevie’s spreading blush all the way down her chest until it was hidden under her very low-cut costume). They’d kissed a few times. Stevie was mostly relieved that she wasn’t alone in liking girls that way.

 

After Stevie had come back with Bucky and Dum Dum and Morita and what would become her crew, Peggy had pulled her aside behind the tents and planted one on her numb lips. Stevie reciprocated in the best way she knew how. Kissing Peggy was nice. They spent the next 5 minutes cleaning off each other’s faces and reapplying lipstick and giggling a bit. Then Peggy patted her cheek and told her to go look after her friend. Peggy was always smart enough to see through Stevie’s hang-ups. That didn’t stop the kissing though, at least for a while. She thinks Bucky saw them, one time. He kept looking at her strange and a bit sad for a while, and she wasn’t sure what that meant. Eventually, Stevie pulled Peggy aside and told her that it wasn’t fair to keep leading her on when she was in love with someone else. Peggy laughed, said she was well aware of that, don’t worry. She knew what she was getting into from the start. “I just like kissing the embodiment of patriotism.” Then she turned serious. “Stevie, it’s honestly alright. If you think I didn’t know you were head over heels with Barnes before you did…honestly. But if you want to stop this, I don’t mind.” She caressed Stevie’s cheek with a warm smile on her lips.

 

Stevie just looked at her, filled with gratitude and so much affection she thought she might burst. Pulling the other woman into a hug was easy. “Someday, Agent Carter, you are going to find someone who actually deserves someone as amazing as you.”

 

She could hear the smirk in her voice as she replied, “Oh I know I will, Captain Rogers.”

 ----

Natasha sets her up with Sharon after hearing about Peggy. Going on a proper date with a girl is nice, if odd. Stevie keeps looking around the restaurant, which is expensive and Italian, expecting harassment that never comes. No one gives them a second glance. Stevie is a lot less conspicuous in street clothes and her hair out of her signature ponytail.

 

Sharon put up with her fidgeting for a while, but soon she puts a hand on Stevie’s arm. “It’s okay. No one really cares anymore, not the ones that matter.” She offers a smile. _She’s quite pretty,_ Stevie thinks in a detached sort of way.

 

“Sorry,” she says sheepishly. “I know that. It’s just still…not what I’m used to yet. Not sneaking around.”

 

Sharon asks more about her life, growing up, the little details that the history books don't talk about. About Brooklyn and the Depression and the War. Stevie tries not to talk about Bucky too much (and probably doesn’t succeed because her whole life before the War was basically Bucky), and asks her own questions about working for SHIELD and now for Tony Stark, which is never going to not be an adventure. It’s nice just to sit and talk over dinner and wine, and Stevie wonders when she started wanting to live again. It’s 2014 and maybe it’s time to start living in the present.

 

But then they leave the restaurant and Stevie freezes. Was that gleam she saw a flash of a metal arm? She blinks and he’s gone. Sharon sees her looking, smiles, and pats her on the wrist. “S’okay Stevie. I can tell when you’re hung up on someone else. I don’t want to get in on that. It was a nice dinner though; we should hang out again sometime.”

 

Stevie, still distracted, finds herself agreeing and actually meaning it.

_\----_

During the War, Stevie and Bucky had little time for interaction. It hurt him, she could see, every time she was forced to brush their time aside. It hurt her too, because nothing really made her happier than the way he looked at her like she was the only one in the room. So she tried to make their time count, even if it was just a game of cards by candlelight after the other Commandos were asleep. And if they were found curled up together sometimes in his tent or in her tent, well, no one was going to tell anyone. The whole crew knew that Bucky still had nightmares from the Hydra facility. Heck, anyone would. If the way he got comfort was from cuddling with the Captain, who cared. And she didn’t seem to mind either. The nights where they slept curled around each other were the nights Stevie slept best. It was like being at home in their little Brooklyn apartment, when she was small and sickly and the heat in the building didn’t work, and they would curl up in her bed so that she didn’t get pneumonia. No danger of that now, of course, but Bucky’s warmth still meant _home._

_\----_

Stark finds out about the date soon after, because he’s Stark and has eyes everywhere. Stevie doesn’t know how he does it and doesn’t want to know. “What’s this I hear, Captain? You goin’ for some girl-on-girl action? Thought that your generation was all about staying straight as an arrow and no sideways looking allowed.”

 

“Shut up Stark; it’s called being bisexual.” She somehow can’t muster her usual hostility when talking to Stark. “It existed in the 40’s too; just didn’t have a name for it, and you had to be more careful.” She pauses, then figures why not? It’s been two years since she woke up, it’s 2014, and it’s time to start confiding in her friends. Stark is actually, in his own obnoxious way, a friend. “Me and Peggy were sort of in a relationship then, I guess.”

 

Stevie relishes the way Tony’s eyes bug out. “You and Aunt Peggy were a thing? Wow, Cap, never knew you had it in you.” She's forgotten that obviously Tony must have grown up with Peggy. She knows, after all, that he's the one paying for her treatment at the nursing home.

 

“Shut up, Stark,” she says again, habitually. “Besides, we broke it off after a while. Wasn’t fair to her. And nothing’s gonna happen with Sharon for the same reason.”

 

All of a sudden Tony gets this ridiculously shrewd look on his face. It doesn’t really suit him at all. “Barnes?”

 

Stevie sighed. “Yeah, Barnes.”

_\----_

The Howling Commandos were like brothers to her. They didn’t treat her any different because she was a woman. Sometimes she felt they forgot she was a dame at all, what with the way they kept stripping off their clothes post-mission to bathe while she was still in the room. Then she’d clear her throat and Morita, in particular, would turn bright red. Dernier would start speaking in French more rapidly than she could comprehend, and then Jones would start laughing at the looks on their faces until Bucky glared at them all, giving them a look that Stevie could have sworn he stole from Sister Mary Catherine. “Don't forget you’re in the presence of a _lady_ , and our good Captain. So there’ll be none of that.”

 

And there’d be a moment of silence and then they’d all laugh again, including Bucky this time. He’d wink at her and she pretended that she didn’tjust  _melt_ at that act alone.

 ----

After much deliberation, she goes to Clint for help in finding Bucky first. After introducing him to Sam, during which there are lots of quips about Stevie needing to have wingmen who actually have wings, Clint turns to her and says, “You know that the Winter Soldier and your friend: they’re different people. You can’t expect him to still be Bucky if you track him down.”

 

Objectively, Stevie knows this, but it’s not something she’s going to let herself think about. “I saw the footage from that bank vault, Clint. He said he knew me. That means somewhere in him, he still knows me. He can come back. And I’ve got to help him do that.” Clint just gives her this look, and she knows that she must look sad and desperate, because she’s seen that look in the mirror a lot lately and knows what it feels like on her face now.  For a second, Stevie thinks that Clint is going to refuse, then he just shakes his head at her.

 

“You sure know how to pull out the puppy dog eyes, Cap. Fine, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

 

They start by scanning camera footage across the world, looking for places the Winter Soldier might be visiting. It becomes clear pretty quickly that Hydra no longer has control over their Asset, as the trail is pretty easy to pick up on, and nothing like the Soldier’s usual M.O., which is not having a trail at all.

 

They nearly get him in Zagreb, then in Bucharest, and then again in Kiev. Each time, Stevie only catches a brief glimpse of his face, his new metal arm, and then he is gone like he was never there at all. Two things become clear. First, that Bucky, or the Winter Soldier, or whoever he was, is hitting Hydra bases, like quick surgical strikes. (“That’s good,” Clint and Sam both tell her as the three of them stand over the bodies in the smoked out base in Kiev. It means that he’s breaking programming, that he knows what Hydra did to him and is protesting it. He still has no problem killing, Stevie thinks, though at least now it’s not from a hit list.) Second, that he knows they are following him and has no interest in talking to Stevie. So who knows what he actually remembers.

 

After the fourth time they nearly catch up to him, in Georgia, Stevie can see Clint and Sam exchanging looks, silently arguing who was going to talk to her. Clint seems to have won, because a second later Sam’s hand is on her shoulder.

 

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be found yet, Stevie,” Sam whispers to her, trying to sound comforting.

 

“You don’t understand,” she hisses at them both. Because they don’t. They have no idea.

 

“I think I do,” Clint said to her. “But this is going nowhere.”

 

And then they get the call from Hill about a new Hydra plot and something about a boy-spider hybrid and they have to go back to New York. But Stevie’s not giving up. Not yet. Not ever. It’s 2014 and Stevie is no closer to giving up on Bucky than she ever was.

  _\----_

 That day in the Alps, that cold day in 1945 when Bucky fell, they were standing on that cliff. Stevie and Bucky were joking about payback, and about the Cyclone on Coney Island, and it was just like old times. And then right as she was stepping into free space, beginning to slide down that wire, she heard Bucky call: “Hey Rogers! If we get out of this, remind me to ask you to marry me!”

 

She nearly lost her grip on the zipline, she was so startled. As soon as she's no longer airborne and regains her balance, she looks at Bucky admonishingly over her shoulder. “Bucky, this is not the time to joke around! We’re on a mission!” And pretends she isn’t wistfully wishing that he was in earnest.

 

It’s as if he was reading her thoughts. When she reached the ladder and started to climb down, Bucky looked at her, now eye to eye from where he is crouched down, a wry smirk on his lips. “Who says I was joking?”

 

She never got to ask what he meant by that comment, because then they were being shot at, and then he picked up her shield, and then the blast knocked him out of the train, and then he was falling, and then Stevie’s life was kicked out from under her in one moment.

 

She didn’t remember returning to camp, didn’t remember how the Commandos got her back--whether she moved on her own two feet or if they carried her. She didn’t remember who told Colonel Philips. She remembered trying and failing to get drunk and Peggy comforting her. She remembered screaming and hurling things in a rage at her own idiocy and at Bucky’s, and above all at herself because she could have been faster, damn it!

 

Because after Bucky fell, they gave her all of his possessions. His regulation uniform, not the one that he’d been wearing. A small bundle of his things. A penknife, a razor and shaving set, a few pictures of his ma, his sister, and Stevie. And a small box. Inside the box was a ring. And a letter, for her.

 

 _Dear Stevie,_ it read.

 

_If you’re reading this, then I’m dead. Had one of these farewell notes all planned out to be sent to you if I was killed in action, and then you had to show up as Captain America, and I had to go make a new one. Figures, right? ~~You’re always poking holes in all my plans~~. Anyway, Stevie, you know I’m no good with words, at least not the ones that count, and I’d better make these ones count if they’re the last ones you’ll get from me. _

_So first things first. I love you. As in I’m sweet on you like all the apple pie in the world. Always have been, always will be. Only I know that you don’t feel that way about me, and I’ve made my peace with that. Had to pretty quick after I saw you and Agent Carter a while ago. And if you think I didn’t notice that you were doll dizzy and khaki wacky _(1) _a long time ago, well then you must think I’m not very observant, or you’re just a horrible liar. Probably the first. I don’t think you realize how much I notice about you. But yeah, Stevie-girl, I’m in love with you, since forever, or just about. Since before I really knew what love was, and we were little kids up against the vast wide world. I remember promising myself that if I was to ever marry someone, it would be Stevie Rogers. Not anyone else. Only I realized pretty fast that I was just a brother to you, especially after I kissed you that one time and you pushed me away. Doesn’t matter. I’ll be happy being your best friend and brother until the day I die. Which I assume has happened for you, and I’m so, so, sorry. And I know I went out with a lot of dames before the war, and I’m not proud of that, but I was trying to forget about you. Never got very far with them. It felt too much like I was letting you down, ~~which is stupid, because we never even went on a date~~. _

_Back then, it was just us, and just me realizing how amazing you are. Now you’re Captain America, and just about everyone knows it. And since I’m a selfish bastard at heart, I just want to know that some part of you still belongs to me. So keep this ring, all right? It was my ma’s, and it’s probably not worth a dime, but it’s special and I want you to have it, even if I never get to put it on your finger myself._

 

_So please keep it, and know how much I love you. No matter what and through everything, I love you more than I love anything or anyone. You were always meant to do great things, and I’m so glad I was able to be a part of them. But above all, be happy. Don’t let any stupid memory of me or guilt prevent you from being you and from living a happy life. Because loving someone means wanting them to always be smiling, and I fell in love with your smile first._

_All my love,_

_~~James Barnes~~    Your Bucky_

_\----_

So it turns out that Asgardian ale does work on super soldiers. It’s nearly Christmas, and Thor brought a large batch back to the tower for himself since human alcohol had negligible effects on him. Stevie is urged to try some (Tony’s influence, obviously), and before any of them know it, she’s drunk as a skunk.

 

And suddenly she can’t keep up the front she’s been putting on for so long, all the unhappiness and the misery that has been building inside her with no outlet. Clint mentions something about turning the game on, and she’s remembering going to the Dodgers with Bucky, and then fat tears roll down her cheeks and she can feel her face twisting up in that ugly way it always did when she cried. God, she hates crying, but can’t seem to make herself stop. Bruce is the first to notice, because Bruce is good at stuff like that, and wordlessly he pulls her into a hug, her head against his shoulder. That’s when the sobs start.

 

Tony looks on in dismay, like what is this monster he created. Thor puts a hand on her other shoulder and tells her that he knows how it feels to lose shield-brothers and friends. Stevie knows that he’s lost his mother and brother recently, so she knows that he at least somewhat understands, but at the moment, she can’t bring herself to accept his empathy. It wasn’t the same. “He’s not lost,” she pushes out between sobs, but right now she is beginning to doubt her convictions _(What if he never came back? How could he come back after being locked in his head and erased over and over again?_ And most selfishly _: what if he does come back and doesn’t love me anymore_?), and Bruce rubs his hand up and down her back, and if she were more sober she’d feel so embarrassed.

 

Clint talks about being someone else’s puppet. “Gotta give him time to sort his shit out, Cap. I was only under for a while with Loki, and I was never made to forget who I was. And you all saw how that fucked me up after.” It’s true. Natasha told her that Clint still suffers from horrible nightmares, and how sometimes his eyes go blank and he forgets what he’s doing as the guilt consumes him. “Give him time to figure his stuff out. When he knows enough of who he is, he’ll come back.”

 

Bruce talks about doing things while not knowing who or what you are. The guilt of it. “It can be hard to face the people you love after that, Stevie. Knowing they know what you did.”

Stevie knows that they are right, yet she still finds herself wailing into his neck, eyes closed to stop the dizziness. “But you don’t understand. He wanted to marry me, and I never knew. I could never see myself marrying anyone, but I would have been Mrs. Barnes if we’d gotten our heads out of our asses and figured out how stupid we both were. God, I would have fucking loved to have been Mrs. Barnes. And now he doesn’t know who I am.”

 

No one really knows what to say after that. They just sit there with her until her tears run out, and Natasha curls up on her other side, so she’s sandwiched between her and Bruce. It’s nearly 2015, and she thinks that this is the first time she’s had a family since it was just her and Bucky. She won’t ever let go of him, but maybe she can find other sources of happiness in the people she chooses to have around her.

 

She wakes the next morning with a massive hangover, her first since the 1940’s. She’s on the couch with a blanket tucked around her and a glass of water on the coffee table. Stevie smiles, despite the pounding head. Then she remembers the crying and the sobbing on people and can’t look at anyone for a week without blushing until she realizes that none of them think any less of her for crying. And it feels nice that they know, after so long holding everything in. And some of Stevie Rogers’ heart starts to mend.

 ----

A few days after finding the letter she was on the plane with Schmidt, and then she realized she had to get the plane down. In a way she was relieved, even as her hands shook with fear as they clutched the controls. She called Peggy, because she loved Peggy and because she needed to hear someone’s voice right now.

 

“Maybe me and Bucky will get that date now, huh, Peg? And all the other ones we missed out on. I’ll have to practice dancing though. I still don’t know how to dance.”

 

She could hear that Peggy was crying, and wished she were there to tell her it would all be all right. “That’s alright. I’m sure he’ll show you how.”

 

The ice was getting closer. Stevie watched it grow and expand, fill her sightline. _Not long now,_ she thought, and the fear was gone.

 

“Yeah, Buck was always a great dancer. He’ll be a good teacher. He’d better start out slow, though. I’d hate to step on his-”

 

Stevie was slammed forward into the glass, then thrown backward. A brief flare of pain, and then blackness.

 

She thinks she might have dreamed, but she can’t remember. When they pull her out of the ice 70 years later, the scientists defrosting her find her with her hand at her neck, holding some sort of necklace. When they pry her fingers apart, they find a simple silver ring on a chain in her palm, its impression deeply pushed into her flesh from clutching it so tightly.

  _\----_

It’s when she least expects it that Bucky finds her. He’s sitting in the Avengers’ living room, perched uncomfortably in an armchair, when they all (plus Sam, he’s an Avenger now, roped into it by Tony after he fixed and upgraded his wings) exit the elevator, covered in grime and exhausted.

Tony yells something about the security system; Natasha and Clint reach for their holsters automatically. Stevie pushes them back. She can deal with this. With Bucky. There’s this sort of desperate look in his eyes that she doesn’t think the Winter Soldier can possess. And he’s not getting up, rather, he’s curling in on himself as if trying to escape her gaze. That’s not acceptable.

 

“Hey Stevie” he whispers as she kneels next to him. He doesn’t move, but she thinks he might be afraid of making sudden movements around her. Whether or not that’s because he doesn’t trust her or doesn’t think that she trusts him is unclear _. Or does he not trust himself?_ she thinks suddenly and her heart breaks a little more.

He looks so lost.  “I was in love with you.” He says it, and Stevie’s not sure if it’s a question.

 

“Yeah Buck,” she whispers anyway, because now she knows it to be true, even if she’d never have believed it in the 40’s. “Yeah, you were.”

His eyes, so sad and haunted and so like and unlike the eyes of the Bucky she knew, lock and hold with hers. She knows that she’s changed too, doesn’t know if Bucky knows or recognizes it. “Were you...” He can’t seem to get the words out, but Stevie knows what he’s trying to ask.

 

In response, she pulls out the ring she still keeps around her neck. She hopes he remembers that much. His eyes widen and she knows he does. His left hand, his metal hand, reaches out reverently, and she thinks _yes, please touch me_ but instead he delicately fingers the simple silver band on its simple silver chain. It’s more delicate than she’s come to expect from that hand, though then again, she’s really only ever seen it used to destroy and hurt. But it can’t do that all the time.

He’s looking at her again, a question in his eyes, and Stevie realizes that he doesn’t know that she’s already answered the question. “Course, Buck. S’always been you. You jerk.”

“Punk,” he says, a little surprised at himself, and that word is enough to have her practically leap at him. It’s probably too fast, judging by the way he stiffens noticeably, but she can’t bring herself to care, because this is Bucky, and she’s hugging him like she hasn’t been able to since 1945. They still fit together, in that funny way that they did both before and after she got the serum. It’s 2015 and even 70 years and ice and Hydra and the Avengers and hundreds of forced killings later, they’re still Stevie and Bucky. And he must realize it too. Because soon his arms hesitantly wrap around her and his head lands on her shoulder and are those tears?

She can hear Sam shooing the others away, and spares a second to shoot him a grateful glance, because Sam always knows what she needs. He’s amazing that way. He just nods at her in acknowledgment. Tony’s loud annoyed voice carries out of the closing elevator as he complains that _no, he wants to see the action._

Bucky’s hand is still on the ring, and the chain pulls a little uncomfortably on her neck, but there is absolutely no way she’s going to make him let go.

“I’m not holding you to that proposal anymore, you know. Not after everything,” she whispers into his hair eventually. He pulls away, looks down at his hands. His metal one can’t seem to let go of the ring. It’s clenched tight in his fist. Stevie knows how that feels.

“Why would you want to?” He murmurs. “I’m not the same person. I’ve done horrible things.”

 

She tilts his chin up, makes him look at her. “It wasn’t you Buck. And I know you’re not the same. I’m not the same person either.”

He shakes his head at her, his eyes desperate for her to listen to him and to leave like he thinks she should. There’s no way that’s happening. “I’m still not sure who I am. I tried to find out. Tried to go back to where I had assignments but that just made me remember all the horrible things. I need to remember the good things too, Stevie. Or else I’m pretty sure I’ll go mad.” His lips press together in that way he did when he admitted something too truthful.

She smiles at him, and smiles wider when she can see the corners of his mouth turn up, in a tiny imitation of his former smile. _We’ll get there_ , she thinks. “I can help with the good memories,” she says aloud. “If you let me.”

  _\----_

James Buchanan Barnes never got the chance to ask Stephanie Grace Rogers to marry him before he was declared dead in 1945. It’s 2017 and the Avengers (of which Bucky is now a somewhat reluctant part of) are fighting the newest alien invasion when Stevie hears her boyfriend’s familiar voice in her earpiece.

 

“Hey Rogers! If we get out of this, remind me to ask you to marry me!” Stevie grins.

 

It’s not a perfect life that they’ve scrambled together, but it’s enough for Stevie and Bucky. It’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> (1) 40’s slang for girl crazy and boy crazy, respectively.
> 
> Comments of all kinds much appreciated. Thank you for reading!


End file.
